The Morning After The Night Before
by The Smoose
Summary: Yes. She had kissed him. She remembered kissing him, but he was sort of missing the point. "Yeah, after two glasses of white wine and you hitting me in the head with a Wii controller. How great could my judgement have been?"
1. Chapter 1

So this is something that stemmed from the Q&A thing that Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr did at the Hero Complex Film Festival. Basically, Favreau wanted the opening of IM2 to be as follows, but because of 'money issues' or something **, they had to cut it out. Same for the 'You complete me' scene. The anger I felt at this, along with OpheliusRex's, spawned this little doozy. I acted as Tony, she as Pepper, and we both hope you enjoy it, along with part two which is coming shortly.

…as is the epilogue for Snuff as soon as I find the bloody memory stick I saved it on.

* * *

><p>'Oh shit.'<p>

That one sentence accurately described Tony Stark's first thought as he opened his eyes, turned to his left and saw an all too familiar pool of sunset-orange hair spilling across the pillow next to him. His second thought was similar to the first, with just a touch more deer-in-the-headlights panic to go along with it.

He held his breath. Why? Because apparently if he did so, either a) Pepper would vanish into this air, b) _he_ would vanish into thin air, or c) time would reverse itself to before whatever horrendously intoxicated state of mind the both of them had been in to get to the here and now, and something would stop them.

None of these things happened, of course. What did happen was that Tony then forgot to actually continue breathing, leading to an overly loud exhale and an equally obnoxious inhale, which then resulted in Pepper waking up, turning over and her eyes damn near popping out of her head.

'Oh shit.'

* * *

><p>This was bad. This was <em>beyond<em>bad.

Ten years, she'd made it _ten freaking years_without succumbing to Tony's bad-boy appeal and dark Italian charm. She'd purposely ignored every single attractive feature on his body (which literally only excluded his feet and toes) that most women couldn't stop looking at. She had refused his many (usually intoxicated) advances, she'd been able, even, to avoid this whole new Tony that had come back from Afghanistan.

Until last night, apparently. And she knew this wasn't just an 'oops I fell asleep in your bed' sort of thing because she was already sore and she hadn't actually moved yet. And then the night before came rushing back to her memory in ridiculous detail and the heat rushed to her face as she exhaled, "Oh, shit."

* * *

><p>Under normal circumstances, her outburst would have been funny. Virginia Potts swearing? Heaven forbid.<p>

Of course, if they were talking things that should be forbidden, this was definitely up there with the big boys.

That's probably how this started, Tony thought as he stared at the wide eyed woman next to him. Forbidden things didn't usually stay forbidden for long around Tony. Quite clearly.

He cleared his throat and swallowed, still unable to move an inch.

"Hi..."

* * *

><p>She couldn't help it, the anxiety and the hangover were well on their way already to making her a raging bitch. She narrowed her eyes, tugging the duvet closer to her (as if he hadn't already seen it all, <em>Jesus Christ this was so embarrassing)<em>. "Hi? _Hi?_"

The look on his face was so shocked and even a little bit hurt that she immediately felt bad. "Tony," she continued after a moment, "Do you remember last night? At all?" Because she did and she certainly didn't want to have to explain things to him. She'd get up and run but she wasn't 100% sure she could walk without limping and she also wasn't sure where her clothes were. Or if they were intact. She can vaguely remember him ripping something off of her and her insisting he'd have to buy her a new…whatever it was.

* * *

><p>Did he remember last night?<p>

Well there was a question and a half.

The way she was looking at him though...yeah, this was most definitely his fault.

He remembered lumbering upstairs at around twenty to eight and finding Pepper still glued to her laptop. He remembered prying said laptop away from her, much to her annoyance, and putting a deadlock on it so she could stop freaking working for a second. He remembered offering her a drink while she frantically tried to hack back in to her laptop using some of the tricks he'd taught her. He remembered about half an hour later offering her another drink when she'd given up. And then things started to get fuzzy.

He knew they'd started respectably enough - he'd had scotch on the rocks, she'd had a half glass of white wine. He knew they'd laughed. A lot. After he'd gotten that look on her face the first time, he'd found it hard to stop and kept finding stupid jokes that had locked themselves away in the very pit of his mind. He vaguely remembered suggesting they play tennis on the Wii and then...

Oh.

Oh yeah.

'You kissed me.'

* * *

><p>She raised an eyebrow at him, <em>this close <em>to glaring.

Yes. She had kissed him. She remembered kissing him, but he was sort of missing the point. "Yeah, _after_two glasses of white wine and you hitting me in the head with a Wii controller. How great could my judgement have been?" Oh, ouch. Yeah, that had hurt him. And despite it all she really didn't want to see that look on his face. Besides which she had barely been buzzed and it had been mostly her fault.

She rolled onto her back and sighed deeply, closing her eyes. "Okay, let's…just…think this through. Um…" she opened her eyes and sat up, keeping the duvet with her because…well, she was still way too embarrassed. "Where are my…?" And there they were. Her clothes and his clothes, strewn all over the floor, and yep, there was her favourite blouse, ripped apart, buttons all over the place. And she couldn't for the life of her find her thong among the mess.

With a huff of frustration she flopped back onto the bed, covering her eyes with the back of her arm, speechless.

* * *

><p>"How great could my judgement have been?"<p>

Huh. Well wasn't that a slap in the face?

He watched her as she realised what she'd said, barely listening to her rambling as the pain behind her words settled in.

This he hadn't been expecting. Granted, he hadn't been expecting any of it, but when she'd kissed him...things started happening. His tummy went funny, for one, and his chest had tightened. Of course, that could have been down to those weird lines that had started forming around his chest. He should probably get Jarvis to look into that.

One problem at a time Stark.

Pepper slumped back down next to him and he sighed. He was at a loss as to what to do. Not only was he not used to still being here when his lay woke up, but he was very not used to it being Pepper. He turned his head to look at her, seeing her staring up at the ceiling, duvet clutched to her chest like her life depended on it, and he sighed.

His brain finally kicked into gear and formulated a sentence for him, but strangely, he strongly disagreed with it.

'So...I'll close my eyes, you...do...whatever you have to and we both just...forget it?'

* * *

><p>She couldn't help the massive wave of relief that rushed through her at his suggestion. "Yes," she answered, finally able to get enough air into her lungs to form a coherent thought, "let's…yeah." She waited until he'd closed his eyes to leap out of bed and start scooping clothes off the floor, hoping she was grabbing hers and not his, and running barefoot into his closet before closing the door behind her.<p>

"Okay," she called out, looking down at the tattered remains of her shirt. How was she supposed to go anywhere like that? Even home? And she still couldn't find her thong. It hadn't occurred to her that it could still be in his bed.

The skirt looked ridiculous with her shirt hanging so loosely off of her, the black fabric of her plain bra peeking out. With a sigh, she rested her head on the closet door. "Tell me when you're decent," she requested. Yeah, she was definitely sore, but she wasn't bow-legged sore. It had been too long- that had to have been it, that had to have been why she'd done it. It had been a very, very long time, and Tony was so willing… and she was such an idiot.

* * *

><p>The way she hastily agreed to just drop the entire subject also did things to his stomach and chest, and he was damn sure it wasn't whatever was up with the arc. He opened his eyes as soon as he heard the closet door slam shut and sighed, pushing himself up and surveying the room, instantly spotting Pepper's black lace thong dangling from one of the handles in his chest of drawers. The small sense of pride was dulled somewhat by the events that had just transpired, but Pepper's request of him to make himself decent snapped him out of it, and he, swung his legs over the side of the bed, heading for the chest of drawers and pulling a fresh pair of boxers out of it before cautiously removing the thong.<p>

He debated leaving it there and telling her where it was, but that seemed a little cold. He could hand them to her, but that was just plain inappropriate, even considering the fact that they'd acquired very intimate knowledge of one another over the course of the night. More than once, his brain served up. That must be why he was a little achy. It'd been damn close to a year since the last time he'd indulged in that particular exercise. So, turning back to the thong, he did the only thing he could think of that would dismiss, or at any rate delay any further awkwardness.

He hid it in his underwear drawer.

'Alright.' He called out afterwards. 'I'm...less naked.'

* * *

><p>She rolled her eyes and opened the door, frowning slightly when she saw him standing there in a pair of boxers. "Less naked is not the same thing as decent," she pointed out a little huffily, a blush rising in her cheeks again. She was only complaining because of the things just looking at him did to her. When had he gotten so…buff? After Afghanistan? It had to be because of the Suit, because his arms especially…<em>stop it.<em>

She dragged her eyes back up to his face and swallowed hard, trying her best to forget the fact that she wasn't wearing any underwear and her shirt was literally ripped to shreds. "You owe me a new one of these," she gestured awkwardly, "but other than that… let's just not…talk about this. Okay?"

* * *

><p>Tony's stomach did a back flip as Pepper stepped out of the closet and his chest tightened again, something he knew this time wasn't attributed to the arc.<p>

Pepper was an attractive woman, he knew this. He'd known this since forever, so why was he feeling so...

Oh.

Damn.

Tony stark, serial man slut and borderline sexual deviant, was in love with Pepper Potts.

Of course he was, how could he not be? She'd been there for him when he needed her most, through everything. She could have, and probably should have left dozens, even hundreds of times over the last ten plus years, but she was still here. She was beautiful, kind, the most honest and decent woman he'd ever known.

He didn't want to forget about it. He didn't want to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened. He wanted to do it again, and more than that, he -wanted- to stay afterwards. He wanted to hold her, to bury his nose in her hair as he pulled her to his chest. He wanted to fall asleep completely wrapped around her and wake up to those gorgeous marine blue eyes every day. He wanted her.

Tell her, his brain supplied. Tell her how you feel.

But he couldn't. How could he? No way was he good enough for her. Her reaction when he'd suggested they just forget about it was evidence enough that she couldn't trust him as far as she could throw him, and anyway, who was to say she even felt the same? She'd said it herself, her judgement was impaired. If she hadn't have been drunk, and possibly concussed, this never would have happened. If anything, he'd taken advantage, even if she'd kissed him first.

He was just lucky she wasn't suing him or something.

So, even though his heart was finally finding its voice and screaming at him to drop to his knees and confess everything to her...his brain won out, and he nodded, trying to convince his vocal chords that he meant his next words.

'Sounds good to me.'

* * *

><p>She wasn't 100% convinced that he wasn't planning something- he'd given up too easily to leave her with a clear conscience. She didn't have much time to dwell on it though, because literally three days later her entire world spun out of control.<p>

First she had to convince herself that he was making her CEO not because she had slept with him but because he thought she was actually capable of running his company. Then she had to convince herself that she _hadn't_been about to cry when the crazy guy with electrical whips had him around the throat right in front of her. In fact, she'd been fighting it so long and hard that she wasn't sure why she was surprised when it dawned on her, on the way back from Monaco, sitting across from him in his private jet-

"Not everybody runs on batteries, Tony."

She was in love with him. It actually shocked her more that she had come to that conclusion not in a moment of drama- not when he was fighting Stane, not when he was trying to save the world, not when he was recklessly driving his_ stupid_race car just to prove he could- but in a moment of calm. A moment of connection. God, she was so in love with him that it made her entire body ache.

But she wasn't going to say a word about it. She wasn't going to change anything about her usual demeanour, because he hadn't breathed a single word to her about the night they'd spent ripping off each other's clothes and doing completely frustrated sexual things to each other. _She would not acknowledge her feelings for Tony Stark._No ifs, ands, or buts.

But… he was so different now. And she wasn't sure he'd break her heart anymore.

If she could find a moment to take a breath and think about something other than Vanko, Hammer, or Ruschman (who she was convinced had been sent literally just to make Tony rip out her heart and stomp all over it), maybe she'd find a way to tell him.


	2. Chapter 2

So this is what it had come down to.

His health was deteriorating quicker than he could even think about finding a solution, and there was _no_ solution. He couldn't tell anyone, they'd be disappointed in him. The great Tony Stark, can't even keep himself alive. No, he couldn't let people sympathise over him. Especially Rhodey and Pepper.

God, Pepper.

She'd be distraught. And all that time they could have had together if it wasn't for his…Starkness. She couldn't find out, not until it was too late to do anything. The pain would be there, but it would be brief. And he'd have to somehow hand Iron Man over to Rhodey; because God knows he was the only person he could trust to wear the suit. And the company…what the hell would happen to the company?

Unless…yes.

If he gave the company to Pepper, he knew it'd be in safe hands. He knew she'd look after it well because that's what she'd been doing for the past ten years. And she'd be so busy with it, she wouldn't even notice when he…when he…

Tony sighed.

Well, if it was his time to go, he was doing it with a bang. He pressed the button for the intercom and spoke into the grille.

"Potts, get down here, I want to arrange a birthday party. And did the Boy Scouts get their packages?"

* * *

><p>The list of things she hated grew longer and longer every day. So far it looked like this:<p>

-Tony Stark

-Anthony Edward Stark

-her douchebag of a boss

-the asshole she spent all day with every day

-the jerk she was in love with

The only problem was that literally all of them were the same person. Tony. He was driving her up the wall and then back down the wall and then up the wall again. And now it was his stupid birthday party and she *did not want to be there* but unfortunately she had to be because she was now CEO and also if she didn't go she was pretty sure he'd drink himself to death.

So there she was. And there he was, wearing the stupid Suit and drunk out of his stupid mind.

"Tony, you're out of control."

"You're out of control. Out of control gorgeous."

She manages to get the mic away from him soon enough that she's pretty sure she's the only one that heard that. "Tony, you just peed the suit," she mutters, "it's not sexy." But…he is still pretty sexy. With the visor up and that crazy glazed look in his eyes and his hair swept over his forehead…if he wasn't so drunk and there weren't people there she'd kiss him. Maybe. Wait, no, no she wouldn't.

And then just when she thinks he's agreeing with her and giving up on the party, he goes crazy, and Rhodey appears, and all Hell breaks loose and the only person left to yell at is Ruschman. And the younger woman just sort of stands there as Pepper yells at her for nothing until a wall explodes and they both run away.

Pepper spends a good portion of that night curled up on her couch crying.

* * *

><p>Damn he was sore. And not in a good way.<p>

He had no idea how he'd ended up at Randy's Donuts, but he was damn glad about it. The poor kid behind the counter had almost peed his pants when he walked in, so instead of imposing himself in the establishment, he decided to sit on the roof.

Until the guy with the patch showed up.

If he hadn't thought he was hallucinating before, he sure as hell thought so when Natalie…Natasha…Natashalie walked in. Come on, a cat suit? Didn't she know the crotch area of the suit wasn't flexible? Well, stabbing him in the neck sure quelled Stark Jr.

And now this Fury guy is trying to tell him that his father wasn't as bad as he remembered? What the hell? What, were they like best buds or something?

Oh, they were. Huh.

So now, here he was, sifting through some ancient trunk Fury had dumped on him while he was being 'babysat' by Coulson. He was angry, sure. Some guy trying to tell you they know your own father better than you ever did kind of does that to you. What did Fury expect him to discover through all this stuff? Notebooks with unfinished equations, film reels from Expo's past. None of it made any sense, and none of it was going to help his little element problem. He sighed, chucked the notebook back into the trunk and reached for his drink as another film reel ended. Well, one thing was for certain, he didn't inherit his Dad's piss poor stage presence.

"Tony."

He damn near inhaled his drink as he turned his head towards the film reel, barely believing what was going on as his father spoke to him from beyond the grave, telling him that only he, Tony, could make his work worthwhile, that he was limited by the technology available, and that he possessed the key to the future.

"What is, and will always be my greatest creation, is you."

Huh.

* * *

><p>Something cold and empty took control of her when Tony showed up at his.. at *her* office the next day. She could hardly believe he was functioning with the hangover he had to have, but she wasn't in the mood to deal with him, not after a night spent crying over the want she felt for a person he could never be. And the only way to look him in the eye was with something empty behind her own eyes, was on autopilot as the real Pepper sat inside and strained to tell him that she loved him and she hated him for being such a rampant asshole all the time, including and especially to her.<p>

And he had strawberries. She wanted to cry again. He did this frequently- got so *close* to being the man she dreamed he could be, the one she could risk being with, and then at the last second he'd do something or she'd realize that he wasn't. "Did you bring me strawberries?" His smug, self-satisfied "yep" made her angrier than ever. "Did you know," she started, her voice level, "that there is only one thing on earth I'm alleri-"

He cut her off. And then he started talking and talking and she was pretty sure he hadn't said anything but weak verbs and the pronoun 'I', and she was also pretty sure she was very close to throttling him to death and very calmly disposing of the body in the Stark Industries disposal. "I need you-"

And he cut her off once again, "I need you, too, that's what I'm trying to-" She couldn't hear the rest of that sentence. If she heard the rest of that sentence it would ruin her completely and now was not the time to fall apart. He was too invested in himself to pay attention to his floundering company- it was up to her. So she cut him off too, knowing full well it wasn't what he meant, "to leave. I need you to leave."

When she walked out of that room with Happy hot on her heels she had to swallow a lump in her throat and clench her hands into fists to keep from turning around and running back to him.

"Are you okay, Ms. Potts?"

"I'm fine, Happy."

As far as she could tell, everything was finally winding down. And maybe they were just in the eye of the storm, but either way, she didn't mind the breaths she was able to take, standing on the steps of the Expo, calming herself. The PR for this incident was going to take over her entire life. She'd be working from the grave. And she was 90% sure that Tony didn't care what the PR buzz would be- he was above that, surely. He was Tony Stark. He didn't notice anything but hard alcohol and easy women, which was why she had always been low on his list.

It was only a few seconds later that something started beeping. Confused, she looked around and the fallen Hammer drone caught her eye- the arc-like thing in the middle of it was blinking on and off red. She barely had time to realize she was most definitely in trouble when something shot out of the sky, down to her and then up into the sky again. It was Tony, or, well she hoped it was him and not a drone, but something about the way his 'arms' were wound around her made her feel like it was probably him. That didn't stop her from screaming or pushing him away when he set her down on the roof of some random building.

"Oh my god, I can't handle it anymore."

"You can't handle!-"

"My body literally cannot handle the stress." She started to ramble, her entire body shaking, "I never know if you're going to kill yourself or, or wreck the whole company…"

"I think I did okay!" He would. He would think he did okay, even as something else exploded in the distance. She closed her eyes and took a breath.

"It's over, I'm done, I quit." Had she actually said that? And why did it feel so good to quit her job of over a decade?

"What'd you just say? You're done? That's surprising. No, it's not surprising. I understand. You don't have to make any excuses."

She shook her head at him, "I, I wasn't making excuses, I just…" she didn't know what she 'just', but he saved her from finishing her sentence by saying,

"Actually you were just making excuses but you don't have to, because-"

"No, I wasn't, because I'm actually very justified, I-"

"Hey, hey, hey. You deserve better."

He was holding her hand. He'd never held her hand before; not that she could remember anyway, and even though he had the Suit on, it had to mean something. She swallowed, looking down. "Thank you. Thank you for understanding." She could see him smile at her out of the corner of her eye and the look on his face broke her heart. Was she really going to leave him like this? *Could* she?

"Yeah, let's.. let's talk cleanup."

"I'll handle the transition, it'll be smooth…"

"And what about you? I mean you only had the job for a few days, that's gotta seem…" relief made her giddy and couldn't help but return his banter, shifting closer,

"Well with you it's like dog years," he quirked his lips at her, "I know," and this game was familiar, this gentle cat-and-mouse pull of wit, "It's like the presidency-"

Years later they'd still argue about who kissed who.

* * *

><p>It was over.<p>

He'd kicked ass. Rhodey had kicked ass. They'd both kicked each other's ass for a few seconds, but ass kicking was ass kicking and in the end, the big bad was beaten. That's all that mattered.

They both wandered over to Vanko who was lying in the crumpled mess that used to be his suit of armour (and though he'd never admit it, Tony was quite impressed with the workmanship), both nearly jumping out of their skins when his eyes popped open again.

"You lose."

Tony was about to say something incredibly witty about who had actually lost when the drones surrounding them started beeping. He looked around, brain running on standby as he tried to figure out what the everloving fuck was actually going on.

"These drones are rigged to blow, we gotta get out of here."

Shit.

Wait.

If they were all going to blow…

"…Pepper?"

Completely on his own, Jarvis locked on to Pepper's cell phone signal and beamed the location through Tony's HUD and off he sped, crashing through what was left of the glass in the ceiling.

The next few minutes felt like seconds.

He grabbed Pepper, much to her shock, flew as fast as his jets could carry him towards the highest rooftop he could see, set her down and watched as she completely freaked out.

He tried to listen, he honest to God tried, but he was just so unbelievably fucking ecstatic to be mere feet away from her that her words just melted into one run on sentence, as they so often did when she got going. But he heard her quit, and that brought him crashing down to Earth again.

He thought he'd been over-exaggerating when he thought he'd pushed her away.

Clearly not.

But he understood, he really did. Hell, he felt like quitting right then too, and as he listened to her arguing with him about making excuses, he got it. She didn't want to quit. Not really. She just wanted a different job. Maybe her old one back, maybe one that didn't involve having to do that _plus_ justify the goings on of the guy that should actually be running the damn company he'd put her in charge of, but the underlying fact was whatever she was quitting, it wasn't him.

"You've taken such good care of me." he said as he held her hand (um, when had he done that exactly? He never did that…he liked it though), his voice just this side of breaking. "I've been in a tough spot and you got me through it, so…right?"

He was telling the truth. If he was honest with himself, he wouldn't have tried so hard to find a cure after he _knew_he had the means to do so if it hadn't been for her. Back when he was signing himself off completely, after he'd given Rhodey the suit and her the company, he was strangely at peace. He'd done everything he needed to do, so to be honest, he didn't mind that he was going to die. But that all changed when the solution was in front of him. He knew he _had_ to make this right, and he was not going to stop for anything.

So while she was trying to talk 'clean up', about handling smooth transitions (giggidy), and telling him that essentially any small amount of time spent with him felt like a lifetime, he swooped. And while part of him was thinking that dying after having kissed the love of his life would mean dying happy, he realised that being able to tell her that was even better.

* * *

><p>She knew she'd kissed him before, so technically this wasn't their first kiss, but it certainly felt like it. And she wasn't complaining. She didn't even care who had started it, all she knew was that they were finally kissing and the ridiculous amount of tension that had built up between them over the last few days was disappearing with every moment. Her hand came up to his cheek and then she needed to drop it to the front of the suit so that she had something to hold onto, because her knees were doing some weird jell-o sort of thing and she wasn't sure why, except that she loved him, and he was there with her right then on that roof, and he was alive after she thought he was going to be dead.<p>

When they pulled back he had a look on his face like a little boy that's just figured out the way something works but isn't sure he should have.

"Weird," he suggests, but her eyes fall to his lips and she leans into him a little more and some autopilot part of her brain supplies,

"No, it's not weird," and she can see how relieved he is in the way the tension drains right out of his body as he says, "It's okay, right? Run that by me again." So she did. And she was prepared to keep 'running it by him' for quite some time before another voice broke them apart-

"I think it's weird. You guys look like two seals fighting over a grape."

* * *

><p>He grinned, he couldn't help it.<p>

She was his. They'd finally managed to break down the wall that had been keeping them apart and the results where astounding. Granted, it had taken two near death experiences -for both of them- to get to this point, but that didn't matter any more. She was staying with him, and that said more about their relationship than anything that had happened over the past few months, if not the entire time they'd known one another.

He felt that familiar tensing sensation in his stomach as the emotional exhaustion of the past few minutes/months caught up with him, and he sighed, gazing into her eyes as if they were holding some sort of secret, and in a way they were. He felt like he knew how she felt, but part of him still wasn't sure. Perhaps this was a reason he'd never actually considered a relationship before, some sort of underlying doubt that she'd leave him eventually, as so many had, but he realised that she never would, or she already would have. She'd stayed with him through thick and thin, good times and bad, through everything that had happened during his near-death freak out.

"You sure about that Potts?" he asked as she shuffled closer to him again. "Cos you know me, once I have hold of something I don't let it go again."

* * *

><p>She'd missed that smile. That was the sort of smile she was used to seeing when he'd come across some amazing discovery in the workshop, not towards her. Overcome with a new wave of confidence, she reached up a hand and brushed his damp hair out of his eyes, their fronts touching a little. She wished he wasn't wearing the Suit. It was hard to imagine how much metal was really between them.<p>

"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," she told him honestly, cupping his cheek as she leaned up to kiss him again. She didn't want him to ever let go of her, she didn't want him to want to get rid of her, all she wanted was to be with him. However she could manage that. Which was probably why she'd stuck with her job for so long- because leaving her job would be leaving Tony, and she couldn't even imagine life without him; didn't want to. He was her life. And she was totally okay with that.

**The End**


End file.
